Welcome

Welcome to the blog of the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at the University of Northampton. This will keep you up to date with both student and staff activities.

The Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences includes staff with interests in biological sciences, conservation, ecology, environmental sciences, environmental statistics, geography and waste management. We offer a range of degree programmes and have a number of postgraduate research students. For more information about studying with us please visit http://www.northampton.ac.uk/.

Monday, 22 June 2015

Relational geographies

Dr
John Horton attended the Fifth International and Interdisciplinary conference on Emotional Geographies at the University
of Edinburgh on 10-12 June 2015. The conference, which was attended by more
than 250 delegates, aimed ‘to bring together scholars from a diversity of
disciplinary backgrounds, third sector partners and creative practitioners to
explore and discuss the role of emotion in shaping and in experiencing space
and society’.

John
collaborated with colleagues Dr. Matej Blazek (Loughborough University) and
Professor Peter Kraftl (University of Leicester) to convene a strand of
sessions focusing on Relational
geographies of emotions/affects, childhood and youth. The sessions brought
together researchers from diverse backgrounds with a shared interest in
thinking about the complex emotional relationships which constitute children
and young people’s everyday geographies in different contexts. Over the course
of a really fascinating, thought-provoking day, researchers presented on topics
as diverse as student houses, acne, the Scottish independence referendum,
transitions out of Higher Education, Slovenian (non-)citizenship, dance
lessons, volunteer tourism, Canadian student mobilities,and Catalonian heteronormativities.

Presenters
showcased a wide range of creative, innovative research methods. For example,
in an interesting presentation, Emma Kindell (Durham University) demonstrated
the potential usefulness of new wearable digital video cameras for geographical
research…As you can see from the
picture, John made a lovely model for this demonstration!

Dr John Horton models wearable digital video cameras,
whilst Emma Kindell (Durham University) explains how they can be used in research.